Ewan Mitchell was in a design and technology class when he learnt a crucial industry lesson. Going a little off curriculum, the teacher asked the students what they wanted to be when they grew up. One classmate hoped to become an electrician, another an engineer. And 13-year-old Mitchell? He thought acting sounded nice. “Everyone laughed,” he recalls. “And from that moment, I knew I had to show not tell and although people thought my head was in the clouds, I always felt like my feet were planted in the ground.”
That story displays some of the determined grit of his House of the Dragon character, Aemond Targaryen, though thankfully for Mitchell’s classmates and teacher, involves a lot less bloodshed.
I meet Mitchell, now 27 and a fully-fledged actor, at a London hotel amid a hectic junket, the morning of HOTD’s premiere. Most of the show’s cast is here along with, and this is an educated guess based on three waiting rooms’ worth of continental accents, two thirds of Europe’s entertainment journalists. The show, if it were not clear from viewing figures (29 million viewers on average in the US), is a big deal. This is Mitchell’s first press tour – in recent weeks he’s travelled to New York and Paris – and he is loving it. “It’s quite therapeutic to get everything off your chest about your character and filming,” he tells me. “It’s almost like closure.”
If you have seen any of the series, you will understand. In the first season, Aemond emerged as the most terrifying member of the Targaryen clan (no easy feat!). The second son of Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and ageing King Viserys (Paddy Considine), Aemond is a fearsome swordsman with a natty eyepatch (a pre-requisite for any arch-villain). In the season finale, he accidentally-on-purpose murders his cousin – the same cousin who previously ripped out Aemond’s eye – on a stormy dragon ride. The final shot of the season, Aemond’s face caught between vengeance and regret, was an all-timer, not just because Mitchell’s features – long jaw, permanently pursed lips, wicked stare – are made for the screen, but also because it ushered in a nuanced character arc.
Guy Aroch
It would be irresponsible of me to reveal spoilers – I’ve seen four episodes, Mitchell has seen two, and we’re only supposed to discuss the first – but this season reveals simultaneously a more vulnerable and manipulative side of the character. At times, he is quite literally naked. It is a thrill, and clearly Mitchell has put a great deal of thought into all of it.
“I made a very conscious decision to really just push for the villain in season one,” he says. “But now you’re going to see all that shadow side. What I love about Aemond is that he has an ambiguity. He could be looking at someone thinking about how he wants to cook them a meal and take them on a date or he could be looking at someone thinking he wants to make them the meal and take Vhagar [his dragon] on a date.”
To avoid any expectations, he has not watched Game of Thrones, the eight-season prequel-sequel series based on George RR Martin’s (still unfinished) series A Song of Ice and Fire. He has however read some of HOTD’s inspiration – a 700-page prequel called Fire and Blood, also by Martin – and spoken to showrunner Ryan Condal about Aemond’s overall arc. And his outfit today is “an homage to Aemond”: a long leather jacket straight out of The Matrix and a black Dior cap complete with punk-ish badges. “It helps me fall back into his world,” he says, though, I should note that Mitchell is unfailingly polite and thoughtful. He doesn’t wear an eyepatch either.
Mitchell grew up in the suburbs just outside Derby, and still lives there. It’s an hour and a half away by train from London and he enjoys that separation: “I can leave the character a little bit in London because so much is shot in London,” he says. “Not much is shot in Derby.” As a kid, he remembers being inspired by Taxi Driver and Citizen Kane, “films that challenge your perspective.” At 17, he attended the Television Workshop, a drama organisation based in Nottingham which nurtures young talent. Patrons include Samantha Morton, Shane Meadows and Vicky McClure. “It champions that raw instinct and gives kids an opportunity who might not necessarily have the financial means to afford drama school. I will always be in debt to the Workshop.” Afterwards, he won television roles in period dramas like The Halycon and Grantchester.
It is fair to say that HOTD is his big break, an experience that has been both exhilarating and, thanks to the on-screen talent, educational. “It’s like class is in session when you walk on set,” he says. Considine as your father, Rhys Ifans as your grandfather. That is not a bad on-screen lineage. And working with Matt Smith, who plays Aemond’s bad boy uncle Daemon, was a full circle moment: he used to watch Doctor Who with his grandmother. Handily, there is a resemblance between the actors, something noted by his grandmother then and by me now.
Guy Aroch
Idolising Smith-as-the-Doctor turned out to be very useful for playing Aemond, who idolises Smith-as-Daemon. (It is, admittedly, a complicated relationship: Aemond imitates, reveres and despises his uncle.) “I thought there was something interesting in never taking Matt off that podium,” Mitchell tells me. “I just kept him there, from where I saw him as a kid.” He found it so interesting, in fact, that he spoke to showrunner Condal and proposed avoiding Smith on set so that the they would only ever interact in character. Smith was up for it.
The first time the actors interacted was in the first season’s eighth episode – also Mitchell’s debut on the show – at a tense banquet, thrown in an attempt to ease family tensions. “That was the first time I’d looked at Matt or Daemon for longer than three of four seconds,” he recalls. “It was lightning in a bottle.” Has he bonded with Smith since? “We have these two sides of the family, so I don’t really see him. There’s a romance to it in a weird way.”
“Every job I do, I try to experiment,” he says, attributing that try-anything attitude in part to his lack of drama school education. But you get the sense that Mitchell is just really, really into this acting thing. When I ask him how he relaxes back in Derby, he struggles for an answer. “I go to work and I act. And then when I go home, I think about acting. Everything I do in some way relates to acting. If it doesn’t, in some way, shape or form, it turns me off quick.”
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In 2023, he had a small but memorable part in collegiate black comedy Saltburn as maths prodigy Michael. (Asides from Barry Keoghan’s lead performance, he was the only other non-posho in the reworking of Brideshead Revisited.) Working with the film’s director Emerald Fennell – watching her films is like “walking a tight rope in heels”, he says – has clearly given him a taste for distinctive directors. He’d love to work with Lynne Ramsay, the Safdie brothers as well as actors like Anya Taylor-Joy and Daniel Kaluuya.
But back to the show at hand. It is very hard to forget, not least because of the proliferation of HOTD branding in the room. What’s next for Aemond? Who knows. Mitchell isn’t reading the spoilers, and I’m not about to ruin things for him. “If you bring something fresh to the table, you’re always guaranteed a seat,” he says, with a slight squirm and out-of-character earnestness. A swish of the leather jacket later, he admits: “That was cheesy.”
‘House of the Dragon’ airs on Sky Atlantic and Now TV. New episodes weekly
Photographs: Guy Aroch
Styling: Nick Sullivan
Grooming: Melissa DeZarate, using La Mer and Kevin Murphy
Tailoring: Joseph Ting
Design Director: Rockwell Harwood
Contributing Visuals Director: James Morris
Executive Producer, Video: Dorenna Newton
Executive Director, Entertainment: Randi Peck
Henry is a senior culture writer at Esquire, covering film, television, literature, music and art for the print magazine and website. He has previously written for the Guardian, The Telegraph and The Evening Standard.
At Esquire, he explores entertainment in all forms, from long reads on Lost in Translation’s legacy to trend stories about Taylor Swift, as well as writing regular reviews of movies and television shows. He has also written many profiles for Esquire, and interviewed the likes of George Clooney, Austin Butler and Mike Faist.
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